Oklahoma City Thunder general manager Sam Presti mentioned during his exit interview on Monday that he will talk to Lu Dort and Darius Bazley about potential rookie extensions but mention that there is no urgency to get a contract done this offseason.
“We’ll definitely have a conversation on that. I don’t know when that will — those conversations will really kind of pick up, but we will have some different options,” said Presti. “I don’t want to get into all of them, but the most important thing in those situations is trying to understand like where everybody is coming from and you need to work together. That’s always been my experience on any of those situations.”
Presti brought up how the team wants their payroll to stay relatively clean heading into the 2023 offseason due to a potential new CBA agreement between the NBA and NBPA.
“Both of those guys are lined up where money would hit ’23, so we don’t have — I think we’ll kind of take each one of those separately and see what happens, but they’re great. They’re both great guys, and I want them to — I want to hear what they’re thinking, and I need them to understand, we have to also balance the interest of the team, as well,” said Presti. “But I feel like those guys are pretty invested in what we’re trying to accomplish. We’ll just work through it and do it in a way that hopefully can work for everybody if that’s possible, great, otherwise we’ll wait and get it the following year.”
During their respective exit interviews, both Dort and Bazley played it safe when asked about a potential contract extension this summer, saying that they’ll defer those talks with those agents and are just focused on improving this summer.
Dort is under contract for $1.9 million next season under a team option that will likely get picked up; if no deal is met, Dort will be an unrestricted free agent in the 2023 offseason. Bazley is under contract for $4.3 million next season and can be offered a qualifying offer for the 2023-24 season that is worth $6.2 million if the Thunder choose to go down that route. If not, then Bazley could enter restricted free agency in the 2023 offseason if a new deal is not agreed upon.
